Increase of US military assets in Middle East points to potential strikes on Houthis

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Israel struck tents outside two major hospitals in the Gaza Strip overnight, killing at least two people, including a local reporter, and wounding nine, including six reporters, medics said Monday.
Fifteen others were killed in separate strikes across the territory, according to hospitals.
A strike on a media tent outside Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis at around 2 a.m. set the tent ablaze, killing Yousef Al-Faqawi, a reporter for the Palestine Today TV station, and another man, according to the hospital. The six reporters were wounded in that strike.
The Israeli military said it struck a Hamas militant, without providing further information. The military says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames Hamas for their deaths because it is deeply embedded in residential areas.
Israel also struck tents on the edge of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir Al-Balah, wounding three people, according to the hospital.
Nasser Hospital said it received 13 other bodies, including six women and four children, from separate strikes overnight. Al-Aqsa Hospital said two people were killed and three wounded in a strike on a home in Deir Al-Balah.
Israel has carried out waves of strikes across Gaza and ground forces have carved out new military zones since it ended its ceasefire with Hamas last month. Israel has barred the import of food, fuel, medicine and humanitarian aid since the beginning of March.
Thousands of people have sheltered in tents set up inside hospital compounds throughout the 18-month war, assuming Israel would be less likely to target them.
Israel has raided hospitals on several occasions, accusing Hamas of using them for military purposes, allegations denied by hospital staff.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, rampaging through army bases and farming communities and killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians. They abducted 251 people, and are still holding 59 captives — 24 of whom are believed to be alive — after most of the rest were released in ceasefires or other deals.
Israel has vowed to keep escalating military pressure until Hamas releases the remaining hostages, lays down its arms and leaves the territory. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he will then implement US President Donald Trump’s proposal to resettle much of Gaza’s population to other countries through what the Israeli leader refers to as “voluntary emigration.”
Palestinians say they do not want to leave their homeland, and human rights experts have warned that implementing the Trump proposal would likely amount to mass expulsion in violation of international law.
Netanyahu will meet with Trump in Washington on Monday to discuss Gaza and other issues.
Israel’s military offensive has killed over 50,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were militants or civilians. Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The offensive has destroyed vast areas of Gaza and at its height displaced around 90 percent of its population.

TEL AVIV: Israel has dramatically expanded its footprint in the Gaza Strip since relaunching its war against Hamas last month. It now controls more than 50 percent of the territory and is squeezing Palestinians into shrinking wedges of land.
The largest contiguous area the army controls is around the Gaza border, where the military has razed Palestinian homes, farmland and infrastructure to the point of uninhabitability, according to Israeli soldiers and rights groups. This military buffer zone has doubled in size in recent weeks.
Israel has depicted its tightening grip as a temporary necessity to pressure Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages taken during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that started the war. But the land Israel holds, which includes a corridor that divides the territory’s north from south, could be used for wielding long-term control, human rights groups and Gaza experts say.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that even after Hamas is defeated, Israel will keep security control in Gaza and push Palestinians to leave.
The demolition close to the Israeli border and the systematic expansion of the buffer zone has been going on since the war began 18 months ago, five Israeli soldiers told The Associated Press.
“They destroyed everything they could, they shot everything that looks functioning ... (the Palestinians) will have nothing to come back, they will not come back, never,” a soldier deployed with a tank squad guarding the demolition teams said. He and four other soldiers spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
A report documenting the accounts of soldiers who were in the buffer zone was released Monday by Breaking The Silence, an anti-occupation veterans group. A handful of soldiers — including some who also spoke to AP — described watching the army turn the zone into a vast wasteland.
“Through widespread, deliberate destruction, the military laid the groundwork for future Israeli control of the area,” said the group.
Asked about the soldiers’ accounts, the Israeli army said it is acting to protect its country and especially to improve security in southern communities devastated by the Oct. 7 attack, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage. The army said it does not seek to harm civilians in Gaza, and that it abides by international law.
Carving Gaza into sections
In the early days of the war, Israeli troops forced Palestinians from communities near the border and destroyed the land to create a buffer zone more than a kilometer (0.62 miles) deep, according to Breaking The Silence.
Its troops also seized a swath of land across Gaza known as the Netzarim Corridor that isolated the north, including Gaza City, from the rest of the narrow, coastal strip, home to more than 2 million people.
When Israel resumed the war last month, it doubled the size of the buffer zone, pushing it as far as 3 kilometers into Gaza in some places, according to a map issued by the military.
The buffer zone and the Netzarim Corridor make up at least 50 percent of the strip, said Yaakov Garb, a professor of environmental studies at Ben Gurion University, who has been examining Israeli-Palestinian land use patterns for decades.
Last week, Netanyahu said Israel intends to create another corridor that slices across southern Gaza, cutting off the city of Rafah from the rest of the territory. Israel’s control of Gaza is even greater taking into account areas where it recently ordered civilians to evacuate ahead of planned attacks.
Neighborhoods turned into rubble
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians used to live in the land that now makes up Israel’s buffer zone, an area that was key to Gaza’s agricultural output.
Satellite images show once dense neighborhoods turned to rubble, as well as nearly a dozen new Israeli army outposts since the ceasefire ended.
Israel’s bombardment and ground offensives throughout the war have left vast swaths of Gaza’s cities and towns destroyed. But the razing of property inside the buffer zone has been more methodical and extensive, soldiers said.
The five soldiers who spoke to the AP said Israeli troops were ordered to destroy farmland, irrigation pipes, crops and trees as well as thousands of buildings, including residential and public structures, so that militants had nowhere to hide.
Several soldiers said their units demolished more buildings than they could count, including large industrial complexes. A soda factory was leveled, leaving shards of glass and solar panels strewn on the ground.
Soldier alleges buffer zone was a ‘kill’ zone
The soldiers said the buffer zone had no marked boundaries, but that Palestinians who entered were shot at.
The soldier with the tank squad said an armored bulldozer flattened land creating a “kill zone” and that anyone who came within 500 meters of the tanks would be shot, including women and children.
Visibly shaken, he said many of the soldiers acted out of vengeance for the Oct. 7 attack.
“I came there because they kill us and now we’re going to kill them. And I found out that we’re not only killing them. We’re killing them, we’re killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs, and we destroyed their houses,” he said.
The army said its attacks are based on intelligence and that it avoids “as much as possible, harm to non-combatants.”
Long-term hold?
It is unclear how long Israel intends to hold the buffer zone and other territory inside Gaza.
In announcing the new corridor across southern Gaza, Netanyahu said Israel aims to pressure Hamas to release the remaining 59 hostages, of whom 35 are believed dead. He also said the war can only end when Hamas is destroyed and its leaders leave Gaza, at which point Israel would take control of security in the territory.
Then, Netanyahu said, Israel would implement US President Donald Trump’s call to move Palestinians from Gaza, what Israel calls “voluntary emigration.”
Some Israel analysts say the purpose of the buffer zone isn’t to occupy Gaza, but to secure it until Hamas is dismantled. “This is something that any sane country will do with regard to its borders when the state borders a hostile entity,” said Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at two Israeli think tanks, the Institute for National Security Studies and the Misgav Institute.
But rights group say forcibly displacing people is a potential war crime and crime against humanity. Within Gaza’s buffer zones, specifically, it amounts to “ethnic cleansing,” because it was clear people would never be allowed to return, said Nadia Hardman, a researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Israel called the accusations baseless and said it evacuates civilians from combat areas to protect them.